This game was truly frustrating. Great idea to do a last minute swing at the European who definitely won't be around for deadline, guys! It's not like he could possibly have been playing shady to cover the fact that he had a power role or something...

This ended up nearly being a comedy of errors in so many ways, but in the end it seems more tragic.

"Welcome to the Texas Locksmith Association, Rubik!

You are but a simple child’s toy. A puzzle box designed to lock away anything from the world unless the puzzle is solved. These modern Smithy’s are completely oblivious to your ruse, as they expect to be able to see, hear, and feel their way through your locking mechanisms. But that’s not how you work. Gifted by Bes to protect the secrets of the Pharaoh after Isis bamboozled Ra out of his secret name, you work on sheer will power. You start the game locked and nobody can unlock you without your consent to be unlocked. While you are locked you are impervious to all effects of the game.

You are Rubik, Ancient Egyptian aligned Puzzle Box. You lose the game if you interact with this role, the game thread, or other players in a game related capacity."

Sky was obv scum for me. Dusky and kod defending Sky made me think they were his scum buddies for defending him. Zinger also left some hints that pointed to Sky being scum.

Zinger had no actual evidence of Sky being scum though. And the more he lashed out at people for not following along with his assumptions the more he turned people against him on a fundamental level. Your intuition being right is irrelevant if you alienate the people you need to be on your side to get things done.

I'll post the actions and my further thoughts on the game after work.

That last day is where I was most willing to go along with whichever side seemed more convincing to me. As I iterated in that last, game post of mine Zinger had ultimately become someone that I wasn't willing to lose to on the chance my paranoia about him was right. That coupled with Skystone not exactly being super scummy was all that was needed to secure my vote in favor of mafia's victory. Despite how gritty a game can get, it's still a game that we'll ultimately throw down in, but some people just can't help being like Ahylis or Fable.

Also, I know what you Europeans are capable of, Arrgh.


Never trust the French.

I was locked on Sky thanks to the players who suspected him winding up dead. Then I wound up dead, despite being under heat. Nobody commented on this.

See, for me I felt that that was an attempt by Zinger to continuously frame Skystone while he aggressively pushed him without going after anyone else.

I didnt really read. I just kinda assumed kod was mafia when he didnt lynch sky.

I feel like Rag was easily MVP of the game. Not only did she start the game spamming the thread, which is the correct energy for this game, but her targets would have single handedly crushed mafia on Day 3 had she lived. Her fake claim gambit was a solid strategy for garnering information and drawing comparisons as well. Well played Rag.

The rest of town was not so well played (figuratively). I'm not sure if CL misunderstood his role or maybe he didn't care, but since he never bothered activating the first lock he wasn't alternating as the days progressed. KoD similarly (although understandably given his distractions) left himself locked for over half the game. Tevish was the victim of really bad luck, picking locked players on 2 of the 3 picks he got to make before his death. Aaarrrgh's natural playstyle I think worked well for the role he lucked into, but the game state basically wasn't having him this game. Amber and Faerie bit it too early for much commentary (although Faerie came through early game with the unlocking of Zinger to allow him to get to his ability usage earlier). Zinger's intuition with Sky was spot on, but his standoffish attitude put him at odds with most of the rest of the town whom he was then willing to scum read just because they didn't follow his train of thought. Dusky didn't pull enough targeting to fully utilize her role and that's something she realized late game by which time it was far too late.

On the reverse side Sky's play was his usual until Zinger's revelation. At that point he was a little more open wolf skirting the edge of death. More devil may care than his usual. After the death of the cop and doc he quelled a bit. Dark, I feel, had a good opportunity getting his feet wet scum side. Early on he was ready to jump to Sky's aid vote-wise, but luckily had veteran Sky to bounce ideas off of. Late game I feel he went a little TMI, but luckily (for him) by that point most of the game was pretty worn down and didn't seem to notice.

In terms of balance the game was initially heavily town sided. They had a full alignment cop that if they couldn't cop somebody because they were locked, would unlock them*. A doc that could perpetually save players by locking them provided the mafia didn't strong arm themselves, or roleblock players by targeting them specifically to lock them as opposed to saving them. A merged bulletproof/self watcher. A networker. The decoder pulling in extra info. The vote locker being capable of neutralizing one of mafia's roles. And the ability to save somebody from lynch once during the game.

What mafia had in their advantage was mostly misdirection. Both players were given roles they could honestly claim without much scrutiny. They also had less than expected numbers which allowed them to draw attention to other players as "3rd scum". This I feel played a big part in them skirting being direct lynch targets instead of just connected lynch targets. While it didn't end up working against them, they never seemed to consider using Dark's lock pick to build him as a particularly strong deep wolf. Similarly early game Sky kept referring to himself as a vote locker which I corrected him on constantly even saying it might have significance later. He didn't seem to pick up on the implication of an actual vote locker being present that he could claim against later (the major implication of which was blatant in his role pm).

Random Notes:

Zinger's role worked on a multi level RNG system. First it was established if he would receive from Role PMs, Mod Interactions (which included any interaction whether official or just random bs), or OC chats. From there it would be established which player or chat he'd pull from. And then finally all lines were assigned a number and then it would be established which line he'd receive. I'm glad he pulled OC chat earlier as opposed to later.

Dusky and Rubik were both exceptions to the rules. Not because they had abilities that still functioned while locked, as the game was designed under similar rules to activated vs static abilities in MTG. But because they were immune to all other methods of being unlocked. This means that both Rag and Dark would fail in ever being functional against them unless they decided to let them.

Rubik's role is based losely off The Game. Sorry about your loss.

I think that's all I wanted to post. I'm tired so that's good enough for now regardless.

Aseity — 07/17/2021
KoD is unlikely to make nice just because someone town reads him.
Regardless of alignment, really.



You fkn savage.

JD, let me into the dead chat!

Let me in!

I think that was a very tough game.
With 2 mafia against 9 or 10 town-aligned players it seemed impossible to win.
Especially with town having a lot of strong abilities.

D1 wasn't too good for us because we didn't lynch anyone and the amber night kill nearly backfired. Zinger/Tevish feud helped us a lot though.

D2 was kinda difficult because there was a lot of heat against Sky, but Faerie thankfully looked very scummy. I nearly could have killed Sky because I was kinda too late for EoD, but the vote block saved him. To learn that Zinger was able to read our chat, seemed very OP and made us extremely paranoid.
JD said this in the graveyard chat: "Zinger's claim has the mafia trying to talk in codes and making statements to make it look like mafia is trying to frame them for stuff (even though they are the mafia). This amuses me too much."
"They are being extremely cautious since then. Talking is minimal. Referring to themselves in the third person. Picking targets that will make it look like they are being set up. They got lucky today. Very lucky." (He is probably referring to the Rag NK here.)

At the start of D3 I was confident that Sky will get lynched for sure after Faerie flipped town. But he defended himself well, Zingers arguments weren't convincing enough and there were enough other options to lynch. EoD was ultra nerve wracking but we managed to lynch Argh which was very lucky for us.
N3 I was afraid of a Zinger/KoD or Tevish/KoD team against us. But Sky knows KoD well and we decided to kill Tevish. "KoD is unlikely to make nice just because someone town reads him. Regardless of alignment, really."

D4 was pure chaos because of Zinger and everyone still thinking there are 3 scum.
Then I did a very risky move, partially just to do some limit testing, but it was fine.
CL was an easy lynch because he didn't really defend himself and the townies were very inactive at EoD.
I didn't care who we will kill N4 because I thought we should probably win anyway on D5, but as it turns out KoD was the right kill here because of his ability.

Even though there were a lot of factors which were very unlucky for town in and out of the game, I am very proud to win my very first game as a mafia-aligned player.
And big praise to Sky who played very well the whole game and was an awesome partner to have.

Edit: Did no one realize that every player who got vote-blocked voted Sky?

I tried to verify that after Day 2 but took the mod's answer to mean that there wasn't one. (I should have tried to clarify more, though not sure if he would have answered)

Insider information!

Darn it.